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Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Politicization of Ladonna Harris

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Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Politicization of Ladonna Harris University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for 2005 "Her Heritage is Helpful": Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Politicization of Ladonna Harris Sarah Eppler Janda Cameron University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Janda, Sarah Eppler, ""Her Heritage is Helpful": Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Politicization of Ladonna Harris" (2005). Great Plains Quarterly. 158. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/158 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. "HER HERITAGE IS HELPFUL" RACE, ETHNICITY, AND GENDER IN THE POLITICIZATION OF LADONNA HARRIS SARAH EPPLER JANDA "What is it like to lrve matent!" asked Robert the ignorance through which mainstream Kennedy's five-year-old daughter, Kerry, when society viewed Native Americans, and mir- she met LaDonna Harr~sfor the first trme in rored many of Harris's other experiences with 1965. LaDonna assured her that Indians no the media, the and government leaders longer lrved rn "tents" and Kerry's mother, as she rose from humble origins in the Great Ethel, jokingly told LaDonna not to disrllusron Plains to national prominence as a leading the ch~ld.LaDonna insisted that she wanted advocate of Native American rights in the Kerry to have an accurate understanding latter half of the twentieth century. of what Indians were l~ke,to which Kerry Harris helped to integratelawton, Oklahoma, responded by asking if she shot a bow and in the early 1960s, founded Oklahomans for arrow.' The exchange speaks volumes about Indian Opportunity (010) in 1965, and estab- lished Americans for Indian Opportunity (AD) in 1970. She also became the fim congressional wife to testify before Congress as an expert on Native Americans, served on a litany of state Key Words: assimilation, civil rights, Comanche, and national committees focusing on everything Oklahoma, racism, stereotypes from mental health and education to women and African Americans, and is the reci~ientof numerous awards for her humanitarian efforts. Sarah Eppler Janda rece~vedhe7 Ph D. m Hzstory from the Universrty of Oklahoma and rs assistant He' most signlfiant work, however, remains in professor of history at Cameron Unlwrsrty m Lnwton, the area ofNative American advocacy, and when Oklnhok. The &Ifwing article is deriied born her LaDonna stepped down as executive director of dissemtion entitled "The intersection of Feminism and AIO in 2002 it marked the &irtysecond anni. Indianness in the Activism of LaDonna Harris and yersary of the founding of the organization and a W~lmaMankiller." milestone in her lifetime of service.l LaDonna was born in rural southwestern [GPQ Fa11 (2005): 211.271 Oklahoma in 1931, and met with presidents 21 1 212 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2005 ranging from Lyndon B. Johnson to Bill Clin- territory, language, or social structure through ton because of her expertise on Indian affairs. which to do so," and LaDonna's recollections of Her experiences as an "Okie," an Indian, and a her childhood bear out the significance of social woman in the Great Plains in the mid-twenti- interaction and extended kinship families to eth century laid the foundation for her politi- Comanche ~ulture.~Summertime for LaDonna cal identity and reveal a great deal about race meant an inundation of extended family in the relations and the gender constructs that she home of her grandparents, and at Christmas her ultimately came to challenge. great-grandmother's house swelled with activity. LaDonna says this interaction made her close to all of her great-aunts, great-uncles, and cousins, who "were like brothers and sisters" to her.8 From her earliest memories, elements of These connections were vital to the Comanche, both Comanche tradition and mainstream among whom ethnohistorian Thomas W. white culture infused LaDonna's life. She Kavanagh found that the "nuclear family was learned to speak the Comanche language and usually not an independent entity but cooper- became acquainted with Comanche traditions ated with others to form a bilaterally extended and culture while growing up in the care of ho~sehold."~Both the interdependence of the her maternal grandparents, John and Wick-ie group and the prevalence of extended kin- Tabbytite. Her grandparents had a farm on the ship ties in Comanche culture can be seen in land that they selected in the late nineteenth LaDonna's perception of her relationship to the century as a part of the 1887 Dawes Severalty world around her. For example, LaDonna credits Act.' While the Tabbytite family lived nearly her Comanche heritage with teaching her the thirty miles from the Comanche Nation head- importance of being a strong individual, not for quarters in Lawton, Oklahoma, their farm was its own sake, but for the good of the group. She still considered a part of "Comanche Country." also learned to value all life as sacred and inter- In fact, a sizable portion of what became south- twined.1° western Oklahoma had comprised the Kiowa, Despite LaDonna's sense of being con- Comanche, and Apache Reservation until the nected to a larger community that consisted U.S. government opened the land to white of extended family, fictive kin (those not actu- homesteaders in 1901, just six years prior to ally related by blood but who were considered Oklahoma ~tatehood.~While the combined family), and the Comanche tribe, she still lived population of Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache within the parameters of a poor, rural, predomi- 1n.dians living in southwest Oklahoma in 1931 nantly white community. Negative stereotypes totaled only 5,500, the Native American popu- of Native Americans persisted among many lation in the area managed to sustain a strong whites living in southwest Oklahoma during sense of community even in the face of such this period. Foster argues that Comanches were obstacles as allotment, continued dispossession viewed as inferior, lazy, and financially irrespon- of their land, and the Great Depression, which sible." As such, "they were essentially locked lasted from 1929 until American entry into out of the Anglo economy" and "found them- World War II.5 selves marked as a separate category of people For LaDonna and other Comanches who in their interactions" with the white commu- grew up in the Great Plains, the sense of belong- nityJ2 Racism toward Native Americans left its ing to a community underpinned what it meant imprint on LaDonna as well. She recalled one to be Coman~he.~According to Morris W. instance when a classmate called her and her Foster, "What is most conspicuous about the cousin "gut-eaters," for which her female cousin enduring enterprise of 'being Comanche' is the promptly "whipped up" on the boy who made ability of a people to continue to associate with LaDonna cry.13 She had no idea that not every- one another, not the preservation of a specific one ate intestines, a traditional Comanche food, HER HERITAGE IS HELPFUL 213 and for the first time she found herself painfully LaDonna described herself as a "stoic Indian confronted with what it meant to be differ- girl" and Fred as "poor white trash."17 Shortly ent. That evening, when LaDonna tearfully after their marriage, in the summer of 1949, told her grandmother about the incident, her they moved to Norman, and LaDonna became grandmother cheered her up by telling her that pregnant with their first child, Kathryn. In white people ate mussels and crawdads.14 This 1952 Fred graduated with his bachelor's degree of course shocked LaDonna. She learned to in history and political science, and remained channel her hurt feelings and cope with anger, at the university to study law for the next three but she never forgot her early encounters with years. the prejudice she experienced growing up in the The partnership that began with LaDonna's Great Plains. They stayed with her and later fed bid for turkey queen deepened considerably her determination to fight against discrimina- during Fred's college and law school days. Early tion. Early on, LaDonna drew on the lessons on, Fred developed the habit of sharing with taught by her Comanche grandparents to make LaDonna what he learned in his classes. It not sense out of the world. In the critical process of only brought the two of them closer, it became identity formation, LaDonna encountered two a key study habit for Fred as he prepared for important factors: first, being Comanche made exams. This tendency to discuss his ideas and her different; second, being Comanche provided newly acquired knowledge with LaDonna estab- a lens through which to view and give meaning lished a trend that defined their relationship to the larger world outside her tribe and beyond when Fred later became involved in politics. the Great Plains. Their time in Norman also coincided with the emergence of the civil rights movement nation- ally and within Oklahoma, and awakened them to the extent of the profound prejudice against LaDonna met her future husband, Fred African Americans.18 Harris, while attending high school in the small town of Walters, Oklahoma. While LaDonna "wasn't very impressed with his physical appearance" at first, she eventually That awakening arrived for Norman and responded to his persistent overtures.15 He for the Harrises during volatile challenges to offered to run her campaign for turkey queen segregation during the late 1940s and early of Cotton County, and although she did not 1950s.19 Norman was a notorious "sundown win, this local beauty contest marked the town," where African Americans had not beginning of a partnership that lasted for over dared to stay after sunset for most of the town's thirty years.
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